“She’s my best friend, and I hate her!” There, expressed in playground language, is the schizophrenic relationship between England and France. Affection, admiration, resentment, dislike; all these play out regularly and both puzzle and dismay. Some years ago, I married into a French family of the rural gentry. Many of the men were, or had been, officers in the French … [Read on]
The Remainers weep: “Oh, how we miss the French with their charm, their style, their sartorial elegance and delectable dishes!” Where are they now? Alas! All these have been wafted away, borne on a cloud of bafflement and indignation; for sadly, when faced with a genuine crisis, French governments yield to two familiar temptresses, arrogance and inefficiency. During this recent … [Read on]
On September 25th as Boris Johnson re-opened Parliament to face a phalanx of feminist termagants filled with rage and venom for squeezing a thigh – and an upper thigh at that. In Paris, Jacques Chirac, former French President and well known philanderer, was breathing his last to the plaudits of a French media exulting in the former President ‘s long … [Read on]
It is the heart which is aware of God and not reason’, wrote Malcolm Muggeridge in, “The End of Christendom”. Did God decide to demonstrate this by making an Almighty bonfire of a shrine erected to Him? ( some difficulty here with the personal pronoun: apologies to all readers whose vocabulary in these matters is not based on the King … [Read on]
Careful and sure footed, moving round the hallowed relics, squeezing an elbow here, planting a deft kiss there, ever watchful, ever prudent, alert and ambitious, they were the Eurocrats, and they were waiting; waiting to take their allotted places in the great Palatine chapel. Heavy with scents of candle wax, incense and expectation, borne on eddies of Parisian perfume, the … [Read on]
The very civilized idea of the British and Irish governments coming to some joint accord over the border and Brexit was greeted with scorn and indignation by those who govern our “European partners”. Hadn’t the Brits read article 21 of the Lisbon treaty ? No “private” agreements between members of the E.U! Does this article no longer apply, or is … [Read on]
Tonight President Macron will address the nation, but it’s unlikely that whatever he has to say will have much influence on the people who gathered yesterday at the annual ‘Renaissance Catholique’ book fair. It takes place less than 40 minutes from Paris in an elegant domain once the home of the royal fountain engineers and now a conference centre.Many years … [Read on]
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